At the Dragon's Gate: With the OSS in the Far East

1

FROM WASHINGTON TO BURMA

Carlyle summarized the politics of nations thus: Counsellors of state sit plotting and playing their high game of chess whereof the pawns are men. In the ordinary game of chess, a pawn may sometimes hold the king in check. In the high game of international politics, a human pawn may sometimes hold counselors of state in check. Such was briefly my role in World War II.

The chess pawn, being manipulated by the player, has no will of its own. Whether human pawns have any will of their own is a question endlessly debated. In my own case I had little or none; from the beginning I was caught up in the high game of chess only by chance and was subsequently manipulated only by further irrelevancies.

In writing this book, I shall hope to be discerning, truthful, interesting, and impartial. I may claim to have one advantage in regard to impartiality; having been born, educated, and briefly employed in England, I immigrated to the United States of America and subsequently became an American citizen. My story begins in 1943 when I returned to New York City after a two-year stretch as an Associated Press war correspondent. I had two objectives: to find a publisher or an agent for a war novel I had been working on and to improve my status with the AP as a mere stringer correspondent despite having covered war fronts in China, Burma, Ceylon, Abyssinia, and Djibouti. I had originally (1940) gone to China as a news photographer for a picture magazine called Friday, which rivaled Life but was left wing and had a much smaller circulation.

I might describe myself as theoretically left: Shavian inspired and favoring public ownership, equality for women, and racial equality. Friday magazine endorsed these concepts but went a step further, supporting the Soviet Union, whereas my own critical enthusiasm had been shaken by Stalin’s purges of the thirties, not to mention widespread evidence of other tyranny.

Friday’s readership thus comprised not only leftists like myself but those still accepting Stalinism, including a substantial number of Communist Party members. For a large cross section of all these readers, the Soviet-Nazi pact of 1941 was a staggering betrayal. And when Friday supported the official Communist Party line of condoning it, they stopped reading the journal. As a result, the paper shortly folded up, leaving me in the middle of China (photographing the Japanese advance) without a job and, as all too often the case, almost broke. Communications were so poor that a couple of months actually went by before I even heard of Friday’s demise. It took several more months, first to raise the ante and then to make the very complicated journey, via public bus and Chinese army truck, to get back to Chungking in hopes of picking up another job.

I was still looking and feeling thankful you could get a meal in China, albeit largely rice, for the equivalent of five cents, when there came the news of Pearl Harbor. It so happened I was acquainted with the three Army generals composing the so-called American Military Mission who had arrived a few months earlier to liaise with Chiang Kai-shek (throughout this book I will use the Wade-Giles system of romanizing the Chinese written language) in his war of resistance to the Japanese (a subject I shall deal with later). Hearing they were recruiting personnel, I thought that offering my services would nicely combine patriotism with my need for a job. They seemed pleased to take me on, though the remuneration subsequently offered hardly lived up to their smiling welcome. But it did enable me to eat better meals.

Initially, I was asked a great many questions about China: politics, the Chinese people, the war, the top personalities, the administration, and the past, present, and likely future of China, all of which was taken down in shorthand (tape machines, although embryonically invented, were not yet in use). Suddenly, however, I was transferred to the pay department, which consisted of an Army sergeant who did the figure work and a Chinese assistant who mostly ran errands. It seemed the sergeant was needed elsewhere, and there was no one else they could trust to do his job: a meaningless statement because no cash was involved, only paychecks.

It says much for the patience my close association with Chinese people had impressed into my basically fretful nature that I stood three weeks of this otherwise insufferable boredom, and when I resigned, unable to bear any more, the generals, instead of awarding me a medal for heroic service, scowlingly complained that I was letting them down. Perhaps I was lucky the draft did not yet apply.

So now I was free! But, alas, I was shortly broke again. At just about this point, the Japanese invaded Burma. I will never forget how this news on the stuttering radio suddenly set my thoughts racing and how I promptly hired a rickshaw (usually avoided as cruelly exploitative) to the press hotel where Spencer Moosa, the AP man and fortunately a friend of mine, was there in his niche.

So with Lady Luck still throwing me aces, I talked Spencer Moosa into sending me down to get pictures of the Japanese invasion with immediate expenses paid and subsequent payments dependent on results. (I should perhaps explain here that in those days good new photographs were more valued than they are today. Although the top-class cameras of that era, such as Leica, were beautiful pieces of mechanism, they required far more skill to operate effectively than present-day electronically operated cameras. This was also in the days before television made stills of secondary importance.) Travel expenses would be paid, but additional payment would depend on material submitted and approved.

So I subsequently went through two highly dangerous months in Burma with no contract, no salary, and no insurance of any sort (never heard of it) and was lucky to escape getting caught by the Japanese and locked up in a camp or having my head sliced off as a spy. Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise was never more true. Because of there being no wired transmission of material, much of mine arrived too late; some was even lost in transit. Nevertheless, big-hearted AP sufficiently liked some of what they did get to let me cover other war fronts on the same terms.

But finally, enough was enough. In the middle of Africa, held up for weeks by red tape on my way to the war in Algeria, I was offered a ride on a Liberator returning to the United States. Liberator by name and liberator by deed! Ten days later (on the South Atlantic route to avoid U-boats, flights took that long), I was back home: what joy!

I found my wife, Marion Greenwood, entertaining a few friends, mostly fellow artists. Marion, still young and beautiful, had recently, under the aegis of Diego Rivera, shone in the art world by covering huge Mexican walls with highly competent fresco murals. When Marion asked about my interview with the AP, I saw no reason not to tell her frankly that it had been a washout, and the talk moved on to other topics.

Among the guests was Buckminster Fuller, the architect-engineer who invented, among other significant work, the geodesic dome. He seemed particularly interested that I had been in China and asked several somewhat probing questions. Then, taking me aside, he asked:

Do I gather you had some sort of contretemps with AP?

You could put it that way.

So you might be interested in a new job?

I might very well be!

And before he left I had an appointment to meet him in his office at ten o’clock the next morning.

It was that next morning when I learned the following facts: in addition to his usual interests, Bucky was acting as advisor to the Office of Strategic Service, called the OSS (which after the war became the Central Intelligence Agency, or CIA). This clandestine U.S. government agency was the brainchild of William J. Donovan, a millionaire Wall Street lawyer and close friend of President Roosevelt. The agency operated with unlimited funds not accountable to Congress, and its membership was drawn very much from Donovan’s lawyer friends and associates, along with politicians, business executives, socialites, and academics in the top bracket. A number of so-called experts or specialists were also brought in, with emphasis on explorers, inventors, linguists, missionaries, observers, overseas businessmen, and journalists.

It was, of course, in this category of journalist that Fuller, impressed by my seemingly wide experience in China, thought I might fit. He therefore arranged that I should go down to Washington and meet one of the OSS executives. But before I come to this, it might be useful to consider the origin, purpose, and development of OSS in rather more detail than Fuller revealed at this point.

Wars were originally fought strictly by armies and navies, and the civilian population was affected, if at all, only by the ensuing destruction of property, food, livelihood, and general welfare. This, of course, was at times catastrophically devastating to whole populations, as, for example, during the Napoleonic Wars. But it was only in this century, with the advent of what was originally called the Great War and later World War I, that wars became total, that is, with the whole population regulated in one way or another; if they were not inducted into the armed forces, then they were strictly regulated as to their livelihood, leisure, and subsistence. This extension of warfare was mostly because some European nations, having become increasingly industrialized, overpopulated, expansionist, and competitive, had grabbed off whole chunks of the outside world for their own exploitation ahead of some other European nations who had been initially less organized to grab the spoils worth having.

After a slow start, with the use of methods from the nineteenth century, such as massed infantry attacks whereby men were slaughtered in thousands and whereby cavalry charges slaughtered horses too, war became revolutionized as already described. In addition, the newly invented airplane was utilized, the tank was invented, and with trench warfare becoming the norm, the war was fought largely with shells. Other innovations included the demoralization of the civilian populations by submarines sinking vital food supplies, by slaughter and destruction from air raids, and by propaganda disseminating unpleasant truths as well as lies.

In World War I, both sides adopted certain codes of behavior for propaganda effect, rather than because they approved of such codes, which often interfered with doing the job—that is, either slaughtering the enemy or intimidating him to the point of surrender (a preferred solution because it saved both time and ammunition).

World War II began only eighteen years after the first one ended and was in some respects merely a renewal of it, due largely to the foolish behavior of the Allies in bankrupting Germany with war debts. Out of this disaster had emerged Hitler, a genius with magnetism, energy, and determination, although top-heavily fanatical, which finally led him to overplay his hand to the point of disaster. But meanwhile he inspired his countrymen to subdue the greater part of Europe and to come within an ace of subduing his one surviving opponent, Britain. Parallel with this cataclysm, Japan had achieved an even greater triumph, having shattered the American Navy, overwhelmed all the Allied bases, and occupied most of Asia.

As historian Toynbee emphasized, if an overwhelming challenge does not totally overwhelm, it often inspires the victim to new heights of vigor and success. This was certainly true of America following the Japanese initial onslaught (and even more spectacularly confirmed in German and Japanese postwar recovery). The nation rose to the challenge with an energy, invention, skill, and final success that ultimately made it number one among world powers. All the existing functions in the operation of war were expanded, improved, and speeded up, and some new ones were added.

Among the latter was the Office of Strategic Services, as described earlier. The reasons for the curious mixture in this organization were roughly this: in the USA, equality before the law was not a shibboleth to be lightly dismissed, and the draft then sweeping men below a certain age and physically fit into the military net could not easily be disregarded in favor of wealth, prestige, or political pull. Although OSS was founded for the genuine purpose of serving the war effort, it was inevitable that it would also be used to rescue certain citizens from being drafted into the ranks when it was believed they might be more useful elsewhere, such as in OSS. Although for fear of adverse criticism they must still be drafted, there was no law to say that after some perfunctory training they might not qualify as officers, with rank appropriate to their status in civilian life. This accounted largely for the critical recruitment mentioned above.

I should explain the category of specialist: explorers would be men of initiative, have traveled alone, be self-reliant, and be able to relate knowledgeably with foreigners. Inventors and technicians would be able to devise gadgets to deceive, frighten, injure, or kill clandestinely. Linguists were necessary not only to coordinate with our allies but to penetrate into and spy upon our enemies. Missionaries would have special knowledge and insight relating to foreign countries as well as personal contact with the inhabitants. Foreign traders and journalists would have similar advantages but in very different environments.

Candidates in all the above-mentioned categories, whether they had been chosen by Donovan and other top figures or had volunteered like myself, were, in these early days, nearly all civilians to start with. They had not yet come up on the draft, they had been found not physically fit for military service, they had been exempted because their occupation was in one way or another useful to the war effort, or simply they had been overseas. (Both these latter exemptions explained my own civilian status.)

OSS candidates about to be drafted might choose to serve in the Army, Navy, or Marines—I myself preferred the more prestigious and selective Marines, not knowing that whereas the Army and Navy required only token training from specialists, the Marine Corps insisted on a full program for everyone. The strenuous physical regime, augmented by meticulous discipline, was inevitably a challenge to a man aged thirty-six who had not previously been concerned with any physical regime. But I am anticipating the course of events.

Following Buckminster Fuller’s recommendation, I proceeded to Washington and was received in the OSS headquarters (an assembly of office buildings only a step up from sheds, which sufficiently reflects the recent birth of the organization) by a congenial, well-informed, and precise Irish American, who, I later on learned, had formerly been—what else indeed?—an eminent lawyer. During the next half hour he probed in some depth my genesis, education, and subsequent careers, with a slant in some questions revealing that although OSS was distinctly elite, selective, right wing, and university educated, the organization realized that specialists such as myself might not have all these otherwise desirable attributes. He meant, of course, that OSS would overlook not only my having left school aged only seventeen and gone off to sea as a steward and subsequently been a salesman (an improvement possibly) but also my having worked for Friday magazine! However, one must not forget that the Soviet Union was now on our side, and in any case, I had never been a member of the Communist Party. And it could not be denied, he concluded, that my knowledge of China and contacts with Chinese people in so many different fields would be a useful asset in our kind of work.

So I was stamped okay—subject to a security check, a proviso that in those six words sounded merely routine but in practice took six weeks of undercover probing by security men into every facet of my life both past and present. From a legal point of view, my life was irreproachable. Regarding my leftism, there was almost no evidence of this beyond my assignment with Friday.

During this time I had lost my status as a war correspondent and become subject to draft into one of the armed services. OSS personnel who were physically fit but not yet drafted were classified as specialists who might enlist into the Army, Navy, or Marines and after training emerge as officers with rank commensurate with their previous qualifications, a classification of dubious propriety because high salaries, impressive background, and influential friends outweighed potential competence. This had the unfortunate result of cluttering up the organization not merely with misfits but with destructive misfits, because high rank gave men special powers to exercise their incompetence. This judgment is based partly on my initial observation, but mostly on my subsequent experience, and it is, of course, only partially applicable, because some OSS personnel rose to leadership by intrinsic merit and right action. Another point to be considered is that we are here concerned with OSS operations in the Far East, an area more difficult for most Americans to operate in than Europe because they knew less about it, found it all very strange, and saw the inhabitants as hardly human!

In choosing to join the Marine Corps rather than the Army or Navy, I was, of course, influenced by knowing it was considered the most elite of the three services. As I had neither social background nor other useful influence, I was given rank commensurate with my earnings as war correspondent, which worked out merely to first lieutenant. I shortly discovered that serving in the Marine Corps offered two disadvantages: one, I had to take the very tough Marine Corps training and, two, promotion was slower than in the Army or Navy.

The Marine Corps training taught me that at the age of thirty-six a man is well past his prime. It also taught me to shoot straight with a variety of weapons, including a Colt .45 pistol, for special competence in which I received a medal as an expert.

From the Marine Corps camp I was sent to the OSS training school, where I was made acquainted both by instruction and practical operation with the five branches of OSS: Special Operations (SO), Special Intelligence (SI), Counterintelligence (X-2), Research and Development (R&D), and Morale Operations (MO).

SO was concerned with the use of explosives other than in weapons, for example, blowing up buildings, bridges, or aircraft; sinking vessels; destroying enemy installations and equipment; and killing enemy civilians with a poison pill, a small dagger, a sharp pencil point, a single blow, or even a skillfully folded newspaper.

SI dealt with obtaining information through methods outside the military intelligence gleaned by the Army, Navy, and Marines. For example, they obtained information through burglary, theft, pickpocketing, rifling safes, spying, penetrating enemy installations in disguise, and using certain devices such as cameras that resembled matchboxes exactly.

X-2’s mission was to combat the enemy’s intelligence by penetrating their installation and agents either by traditional means or by our own SI methods.

R&D was to devise new methods of spying, ferreting out, and destroying enemy equivalents of the above and to invent new devices, such as a pocket-sized device for recording conversations. I should note here that somewhat primitive tape recorders had been devised but were not yet in general use.

MO had four goals: (1) to devise all possible ways to deceive the enemy as to one’s intentions, capabilities, and timing; (2) to reproduce enemy handouts, leaflets, magazines, newspapers, and photographs in exact facsimile but with subtle changes that were damaging to the enemy, e.g., in a Japanese leaflet urging Chinese civilians not to cooperate with the Americans, to threaten penalties so severe they suggested the Japanese were the real enemy of the Chinese. This briefly stated example is inadequate to establish the effectiveness of this kind of deceit in actual practice; (3) to devise and spread rumors likely to have a demoralizing effect on the enemy; and (4) to spread reports via agents, gossip, the media, and broadcasts with subtle lies either misleading the enemy and hostile neutrals or causing division within or between them.

Our initiation into this MO activity had actually begun the moment of entry to the training school. After having been instructed to discard my Marine Corps uniform in favor of civvies, to adopt a pseudonym, and to guard my anonymity throughout, I was further told to carry no evidence (such as letters) that would perhaps reveal my true identity when fellow trainees followed out additional instruction to spy, pickpocket, search clothing, and use all other means to break our cover. Although all this training was, of course, strictly for war purposes, I was never, in later life, quite as honest and law abiding as I had been brought up to be. For example, I have never since thought twice about reading other people’s letters or about opening desk drawers if I felt so inclined. In Hong Kong after VE day I picked the lock of an office formerly occupied by the Japanese to purloin a typewriter that was, strictly speaking, now the property of the Hong Kong government. Some years later I obliged a friend by entering someone’s flat through a back window to appropriate a valuable book she claimed was hers. And when a bank on one occasion credited me by error with a large sum of money, I did not notify them and got away with keeping it. These peccadilloes I would never have been guilty of before OSS. I mention them merely to illustrate that not all the wounds of war are caused by missiles.

Both one’s natural aptitude and previous occupation affected one’s inclination and skill in shining in any particular branches of OSS work, and it was perhaps inevitable that I should do best in MO activities and was therefore directed to report to that department in the Far Eastern section where my personal experience lay. This had only just been set up and consisted of eight men, half of whom were in uniform, and two women, both civilians.

The commanding officer (CO), Herbert Little, formerly a lawyer but now with the rank of major, was friendly, cultivated, and enthusiastic. But like many of the key men in OSS, he had been appointed by his lawyer pal Donovan and had no background in or knowledge of Far Eastern affairs except what he was now gathering from books or from the two or three members of his staff who had experience in or knowledge of that area. Because I alone had served in Burma (and was acquainted with the then-famous General Stilwell), I was put in charge of Burma operations with one of the women, Betty MacDougal (later to rise to the top echelons in OSS affairs), as my assistant.

A few weeks after this appointment, Major Little, whom I was invited to call Herb, handed me a folder marked Top Secret. Nobody else is to see it in any circumstances, not even Betty, he said. I now found myself inspecting with a certain awed incredulity the Overall Plan for Burma, Code name Daisy, with full details describing how the SO and SI sections of OSS would aid British ground forces and the U.S. Army, Air Force, and Navy in a combined operation to win back Burma.

Implement this with your own scheme for MO operations and let me have it as soon as possible!

For several minutes I sat at my desk in a state of euphoria. From being a stringer war correspondent I now found myself called upon to play a vital role in the war effort! When the dizzy spell had passed, I went to work with a zestful confidence that what I set down would actually contribute to winning back Burma. I devised a string of rumors, e.g., The Japanese raping of Burmese women has grown to such proportions that Burmese protesters set fire to a Japanese HQ and the Japanese executed two of the offenders, thus seriously damaging the existing friendly relations. (This was one of many rumors I successfully promulgated when later operating a real MO campaign in Burma.) The existence of several different tribespeople (e.g., Kachins and Karens) who bitterly opposed the Burmese for exploiting this habitat gave excellent chances for fomenting further resentment by creating fake Japanese leaflets openly friendly but subtly insulting, deceiving, or attacking or by faking divisive propaganda between the various tribes and the Japanese.

After handing my implementation to Little, I daily expected to be called to a top-echelon conference at which zero hour for D-day–Burma would be disclosed and the overall plan put into execution. Alas, I never heard another word about this Top Secret—Overall Plan for Burma, Code name Daisy. It was locked away in the office safe, and I fear it remained top secret forever.

My disillusionment from this episode was shortly offset by the prospect of genuine action. Chiang Kai-shek, the military dictator in China, who had long suspected OSS might circumvent his total control, had at last been prevailed upon by Roosevelt to accept some initial representatives.

To represent the MO branch, Major Little decided to go himself. But as he knew nothing about China he believed it would be advisable to have me go along, too. Before I deal with this, it might be useful to explain briefly the China background, because China is the main scene of all that follows.

In 1912, the Manchu Dynasty, which had ruled China for three centuries, at last collapsed. After some years of chaos, an exceptional leader, Sun Yat-sen, briefly gave China the nearest approach to democracy and social reform it has ever enjoyed, but upon his death in 1925, the country was again torn apart by civil war. Two main rivals emerged: the Communists, largely inspired by the recently established Soviet Union, and the so-called Nationalists, a combination of the army with leading bankers led by a clever and supremely ambitious warlord, Chiang Kai-shek. Having outmaneuvered the Communists and driven them into distant exile, he established himself as president of China and generalissimo of the army. Meanwhile, to ensure his alliance with the principal Chinese banking house, the Soongo, he married one of the three daughters. This woman, known as Madame Chiang, contributed not only the banking link but two other supremely useful assets: one, her magnetic personality and beauty, implemented by drive, ambition, and fluent English, and, two, her enthusiastic support of the Christian religion (shared by all members of the Soong family).

Several additional factors helped the Chiang hierarchy win the sympathy, admiration, and—above all—financial aid of America. China had been the only large non-Western state to remain free from colonial rule and therefore open to American missionaries who, to gain sympathy, support, and funds, had waged skillful campaigns enhancing the virtues of the Chinese people. This had resulted in a special relationship between the two countries. The overthrow of the monarchy and establishment of a republic under the admired Sun Yat-sen won further American approval. Finally, the Japanese invasion, with its barbaric destruction, slaughter, and cruelty, was fully publicized by the newly invented radio broadcasting then sweeping America.

All this created a nationwide American endorsement of the Nationalist Party, led by what was thought to be a heroic military leader and his incomparable wife struggling to save their country from being overwhelmed by a ruthless enemy, but was in reality an alliance of top bankers and a military dictator to amass wealth and deposit it safely abroad. Two enemies somewhat impeded this objective—the Japanese army by military invasion and the Chinese Communists by militant political rivalry. The Nationalists publicized their resistance to the Japanese, thereby winning American support, but in reality concentrated rather more on resisting the Chinese Communists: it was believed that a division of spoils—territory, trade, exploitation—could be made with the Japanese, whereas the Communists were dedicated to total takeover (as, indeed, ultimately proved true).

Little and I flew out east, not as OSS personnel, because this was supposed to be secret, but—dressed to the nines—as Major Little, U.S. Army, and First Lieutenant Fenn, U.S. Marines, duly armed with Colt automatics, Leica cameras, leather dispatch cases, khaki flight bags, and favorable air priorities.

Because the Pacific route was blocked by the Japanese navy and the North Atlantic of that era presented an excessive long hop for the planes, our route out east went via South America and Central Africa. We thus touched down at Miami, Trinidad, Brazil, Ascension Island, Accra, Kano, Khartoum, Karachi, and Delhi. Even on a favorable priority this took eight days, transport planes still being too few to carry all those awaiting flights. But despite wartime exigencies we were everywhere well looked after, free to move about, and paid the generous travel expenses Uncle Sam hands out under the name of per diem to all personnel employed on his behalf. This package tour was consequently one of the best I have ever had. It was also surprising to me, and even more so to native Americans, to find all this route largely controlled by the British even at this late stage, despite World War I having reduced Britain from virtual supremacy among nations to equality with the USA, and in Delhi (and, for that matter, in all of India) the British ruled with an authority that more and more infuriated the Americans, who could not equal (never mind exceed, as they felt they should!) such innate superiority. The British also benefited from two years’ prior battle experience, so they seemed to know, and mostly did know, more about everything relative to the Far East as well as to the war than the Americans. But our relations with the French